US & Canada Versions: 120. Robin Hood's Death
[There are two extant versions collected in the US: one by Davis (Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1929), dating back to 1882, and one from Niles (his Ballad Book, 1961) collected in Hazard KY, no date given but it's probably early 1930's. Both texts are found below on this page.
Because Niles has admitted recreating some ballads in his collection (Wilgus, Anglo- American Folk Song Scholarship) the authenticity of Niles' version is in question. Since the ballad is extremely rare (read Davis notes) and comes from a single source in the US, it is likely a ballad recreation.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
CONTENTS:
1) The Death of Robin Hood- Davis (VA) 1882 Davis
2) Robin Hood's Dyin'- Albert and Magilee Key, Hazard KY, no date given circa 1930's.
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"The Death of Robin Hood." Collected by Miss Martha M. Davis. Dictated by her grandmother, in 1882. Rockingham County. April 8, 1913. With music.
As Robin Hood and Little John
Walked by a bank of broom,
Said Robin in a mournful voice,
"I fear approaching doom.
"And since the day that we did meet,
Much mirth and joy we saw;
To many a poor man have we given
Since we became outlaw.
"But now, alas! these days are o'er,
For I am taken ill;
I must away to Kirkley Hall
To try physician's skill."
"Fare thee well," said Little John,
"O master dear, farewell;
And when I see your face once more,
Good news I hope you'll tell."
He is away to Kirkley Hall
As fast as he could hie,
But ere that he could reach that length
He was nigh like to die.
And when he came to Kirkley Hall
He knocked and made great noise
His cousin flew to let him in
Full well she knew his voice
"Will you sit down, dear cousin?" she said,
"And drink some wine with me:"
"I will neither eat nor drink
Until I blooded be."
When he perceived their treachery,
Away he strove to fly
Out of the window, but could not,
It was so very high.
Then he picked up his bugle horn
That hung down by his knee;
He tried with all his might and main
If he could blow blasts three.
Then Little John heard his master's call
As he sat under a tree.
"I think," said he, "my master's ill,
He blows so wearily."
Then he is away to Kirkley Hall,
Its doors broke open wide,
And when he came to Robin Hood
He knelt down by his side.
"What shall I do, dear master?" he said,
"That you avenged may be?
Shall I burn cursed Kirkley Hall
And all its nunnery?"
"O nay, O nay," said Robin Hood,
"I ne'er in all my life
Burned any kirk nor any nun,
Nor widow, child, nor wife
"Nor shall it now be said of me
In this my dying hour
Upon the head of Christian folks
Destruction I did pour
"Now bring me here my much loved bow.
One arrow I'll let fly,
And wheresoe'er that arrow lights,
There let my body lie
"Let green grass grow upon my grave
By my side my bow so good
At my head a stone that all may read
'Here lies bold Robin Hood.' "
Underneath this little stone
Lies Robert, Earl of Huntingdon.
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Robin Hood's Dyin'- Albert and Magilee Key, Hazard KY, no date given circa 1930's.
1. When Robber Hood came to church and hall,
How tingled on the ring!
And none was so gay at opening the door
As the woman who lived therein,
The woman who lived therein.
2. "Come sit, come eat, for we be kin,
Come drink the fine[1] with me."
"I can't not eat, nor will I drink,
Until you've bleeded me."
(repeat last line of each verse)
3. She quickly did bleed him from the leg,
She bled him from the arm
And when he bled the livelong day,
He knew he bled for harm.
4. Oh, Robber reached in, and Robber reached out,
He tried to reach the door.
He was too weak to raise himself
From where he lay on the floor.
5. Oh, good Robber knew they meant him wrong,
He knew they'd done him ill.
He could not quit because of the length
From ground to windowsill.
6. Oh, he gathered up his trumpet,
He gathered up his breath,
And he blew himself three long, low blasts
To warn them of his death.
7. When Little John heard the trumpet-horn,
He sat beneath a tree.
Said, " 'Tis the note of a sick, sick man
That I heard one, two, and three."
8. Then John ran quick to church and hall,
And loud he struck th6 door,
And when they would not enter him,
He smote it to the floor.
9. "Oh, pray, master, shall I kill this kin,
Or shall I kill them all?
Or shall I take thee from this bed
And burn this curs-ed hall?"
10. "Oh no, oh no," cried Robber Hood,
"Spare kin, spare church, spare life.
In this broad valley hit shall ne'er be said
That I killed e'er a wife.
11. "Oh, go bring me yet my strong yow bow,
That I may shoot an arrow.
And where it falls, go dig my grave,
So deep, so long and so narrow.
12. "Oh, leave me a length at my grave-feet,
A full length more at my head,
To room my arrows and my bow
Beside me when I'm dead."
1. Wine?
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TRADITIONAL BALLADS OF VIRGINIA- NOTES BY DAVIS
ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH
(Child, No. 120)
Nor one of the three Robin Hood ballads of the Virginia collection has been found elsewhere in America, except in print. All three come from oral tradition in the Scotch-Irish family of Miss Martha M. Davis, of Harrisonburg, Rockingham County, Virginia, from her great-grandmother down. Miss Davis's letters accompanying the ballads contain interesting information. On April 8, 1913, she writes: "I enclose a variant of 'The Death of Robin Hood,' which has come down from our great-grandmother. When our grandmother was in her eighty-sixth year, in 1882, she dictated to my sister 'The Death of Robin Hood,' 'The Rescue of Will Stutly,' and 'Robin Hood and Arthur O'Bland.' 'Will Stutly' is complete, but 'Arthur O'Bland' lacks some lines. The air to 'The Death of Robin Hood,' as we know it, is quite simple and plaintive, in the peculiar minor of many of the old Gaelic airs." On April 25, 1913, she writes again. "The 'Will Stutly' seems to me a ballad with a fine favor of the old days, but its place and value must be left to experts. They are all three, probably, 'The Death of Robin Hood,' 'Will Stutly,' and 'Arthur O'Bland,' broadsides from some collection; but what collection, and when? I have never seen the story of the last two in print. Will you tell me, please, whether they are in the Child collection ? Our interest has been one chiefly of sentiment and association, with the hope that the missing lines would turn up in print some day. . . Perhaps it is only proper to say that, apart from the present generation, so far as we know, these ballads do not belong to the oral traditions of Virginia. The ancestress from whom we have them lived in Cecil County, Md., in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, removed to a Scotch-Irish settlement in Pennsylvania in 1801, whence our forbears."
All three of these ballads, like their Child analogues, are in the seventeenth-century broadside style, and show clearly that some broadside is their source. They are, however, traditional in Virginia. They appear here, moreover, for the same reasons that gained them admission to Child's work: either that they have in them something of the old popular quality, or that they are believed to preserve the substance of a lost traditional ballad.
As to the character of Robin Hood, Child's introduction to "A Gest of Robyn Hood' (child, No. 117) dispels some popular misconceptions. " Robin Hood is absolutely a creation of the ballad--muse," he says. "The earliest mention we have of him is as the subject of ballads. The only two early historians who speak of him as a ballad-hero, pretend to have -no information about him.except what they derive from ballads, and show that they have none other by the description they give of him; this description being in entire conformity with ballads in our possession, one of which ii found in-a MS. as old as the older of these two writers.
"Robin Hood is a yeoman, outlawed for reasons not given but easily surmised, 'courteous and free,' religious in sentiment, and above all reverent of the Virgin, for the love of whom he is respectful to all women. He lives by the king's deer (though he loves no man in the world so much as his king) and by levies on the superfluity of the higher orders, secular and spiritual, bishops and archbishops, abbots, bold barons, and knights, but harms no husbandman or yeoman, and is friendly to poor men generally, imparting to them of what he takes from the rich. Courtesy, good temper, liberality, and manliness are his chief marks; for courtesy and good temper he is a popular Gawain. Yeoman as he is, he has a kind of royal dignity, a princely grace, and a gentleman-like refinement of humor. This is the Robin Hood of the Gest especially; the late ballads debase this primary conception in various ways and degrees.
"This is what Robin Hood is, and it is equally important to observe what he is not. He is no sort of political character, in the Gest or any other ballad. This takes the ground from under the feet of those who seek to assign him a place in history."
The earliest known literary mention of Robin Hood is found in Piers Plowman, published about 1377, where the character Sloth confesses that he knows "rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolph, erle of Chestre" but is weak on his paternoster. In the century following, the references are very frequent, and it is not surprising that Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion, published 1613-1622, says of Robin Hood:
In this our spacious isle I think there is not one But he hath heard some talk of him, and Little John. And to the end of time the tales shall ne'er be done Of Scarlock, George a Green, and Much the Miller's son. Of Tuck the merry Friar, which many a sermon made In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade.
Further evidence of Robin Hood's celebrity "is afforded by the connection of his name with a variety of natural objects and archaic remains over a wide extent of country." An imposing list of these is provided by Child. In addition to the three ballads which follow, two other Robin Hood ballads have been reported from America, and one of them also comes ultimately, though not immediately, from Virginia. " Robin Hood and Little John," a ballad of twenty stanzas, recorded by E. L. Wilson, of Urbana, Illinois, and edited by H. S. V. Jones, appears "Journal XXXIII, 432. " This ballad," the editor records, "was sung in January, r9o8, by William Shields McCulloch, of Normal, Illinois. Mr. McCulloch was born at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, December 10, 1816, and moved to Illinois in 1854. He learned this song from an old man whom he heard sing it about eighty years ago." But for the fact that it is not the policy of the present volume to repeat Virginia material from the Journal, a fourth Robin Hood ballad might properly appear in this volume of Virginia ballads. "Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne" (Child, No. 118) is reported from North Carolina by Brown under the title of "Robin Hood and the Stranger."
The Virginia version of "The Death of Robin Hood" follows Child B more closely than Child A, but it shows more traces of the professional ballad writer, is less in the old popular ballad strain, than Child B. The story follows without significant deviation the story of this version as given by Child: "Robin Hood says to Little John that he can no longer shoot matches, his arrows will not flee; he must go to a cousin to be let blood. He goes, alone, to Kirkley nunnery and is received with a show of cordiality. His cousin bloods him, locks him up in the room and lets him bleed all the livelong day, and until the next day at noon. Robin bethinks himself of escaping through a casement, but is not strong enough. He sets his horn to his mouth and blows thrice, but so wearily that Little John, hearing, thinks his master must be nigh to death. John comes to Kirkley, breaks the locks, and makes his way to Robin's presence. He been the boon of setting fire to Kirkley, but Robin has never hurt woman in all his life, and will not at his end. He asks for his bow to shoot his last shot, and where the arrow lights there his grave shall be. His grave is to be of gravel and green, long enough and broad enough, a sod under his head, another at his feet, and his bow by his side, that men may say, Here lies bold Robin Hood." The stanzas which tell of the excessive blood-letting (B 7 and 8 in Child) are lacking in the Virginia version. Except for the omitted stanzas and for certain differences near the beginning of the ballad, the two texts show a fairly close correspondence stanza for stanza, though hardly in language. The Virginia text lacks the final stanza of Child B.a., and has instead the first two lines of the epitaph found in Child 8 b., wherein, following a later tradition, the attempt is made to identify Robin Hood as Robert, Earl of Huntingdon. The Virginia text, again like Child 8.b., lacks the burden of Child B.a. The only American reference would be to Bulletin, No. 2, p. 5, where this find was first announced.
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From The British Traditional Ballad in North America by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America:
120. ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH
Texts: Davis, Trd Bid Va, 388 / Va FLS SuU, #2.
Local Tides: The Death of Robin Hood.
Story Types: A: Robin Hood complains to Little John that he can no longer shoot well and says he wishes to go to a cousin to be let blood. Robin sets out alone to Kirkely nunnery and 1 is received cordially. His cousin opens a vein, locks him in a room, and lets him bleed till noon the next day. Robin is too weak to escape by a casement. He blows his horn three times, and the notes are so weak that John, on hearing them, concludes his master must be near death. He thus goes to Kirkely, breaks in, and gets to Robin. Little John wants to set fire to the hall, but Robin, who has never harmed a woman, refuses to let him. Robin asks for a bow to shoot his last shot which shall mark his grave, a grave with green grass, a bow at his side, and a tablet stating that Robin Hood lies there.
Examples: Davis.
Discussion: This Virginia version follows Child B as to story, but shows definite traces of the professional ballad writer. In fact, this text seems to represent a corrupt broadside version that has slipped back into oral tradition.
The song, obviously incomplete in America, lacks the "blood-letting" stanzas, although it does contain the attempt to ally Robin Hood with Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (see Child Bb) at the end. There is no refrain to the Virginia version.
See Davis, 3rd Bid Va, 388 for a detailed discussion of this text.